Last week, the Planning Authority turned down an application to demolish and rebuild Villa Degiorgio in Sliema. Given the long and colourful case history, the applicant may well take another stab at it. Still, for the moment at least, the house appears to be safe. That can only be a good thing.
As reported, there were well over 2,000 objections to the project. Hardly surprising, considering that the house is located at the nodal intersection known affectionately as the ‘Three Trees’. If there is one landmark in town, this is it, and that there’s one tree rather than three adds a touch of whimsy. The place also happens somehow to have weathered the breathless and mindless assault that has reduced most of Sliema to an ugly construction site.
Flimkien Għal Ambjent Aħjar (FAA) were among the people who opposed the project. I have tremendous respect for this organisation, which somehow finds the stamina to soldier on regardless of the bleak outlook. What follows is by no means to diss their work.
The clue to the problem is in the case officer’s report, which recommended refusal on the grounds of, among other things, the “outstanding architectural characteristics” of the house. Except it has none. Villa Degiorgio is, in fact, fairly mediocre by the standards of the area. The balcony is overwhelming and somewhat frivolous, the ground floor windows all wrong, and the façade elements disparate. If the house stands out at all, it is for the wrong reasons.
And yet, I don’t really blame the case officer, or the FAA, or the very many people who protested that Villa Degiorgio was especially worth saving. They were in good faith, and rehearsing the language of preservation that seems to work best. In the circumstances, the surest tactic to try to rescue a building from destruction is to argue that it is outstanding, in some way or other.
Problem is, the language – and consequent practice – of ‘outstanding value’ is the language of destruction. Unwittingly I think, and in any case they don’t have much choice, those who argue for preservation on the grounds of “outstanding architectural characteristics” end up replicating the very thing they oppose.
It sometimes happens that a number of non-outstanding buildings add up to make an outstanding place
Take Mġarr. Over the past 10 years or so, most of the village core was destroyed and replaced with flats. What facilitated this (not that it needed much facilitation) was the fact that the old village houses had no outstanding architectural characteristics, real or imagined. It was easy for developers to convince the Planning Authority (not that it needed much convincing) that a dozen average houses less wouldn’t matter.
Now it is true that few if any of the old houses of Mġarr were outstanding. For example, and as someone from that village told me a couple of weeks ago, they had no lavur (stone carving). Makes sense, because until a few decades ago most Mġarrin were more interested in crops than in coursing aspirational façades.
Thing is, it sometimes happens that a number of non-outstanding buildings add up to make an outstanding place. I once lived on a street called Eltisley Avenue where none of the terraced houses were special. Conjoined, however, they made up one of the prettiest streets in town. That could be said of Mġarr, where nondescript homes joined forces to produce one of Malta’s most evocative villages. Until they were destroyed.
For various reasons, most of which are obvious, Sliema is a much more complex case. There are (were, increasingly), for example, many Art Deco and Art Nouveau buildings, as well as several imposing mansions. Now being Deco doesn’t make a building outstanding. It just makes it Deco.
That, and a large part of what makes Sliema attractive, are the rows of houses that are not individually outstanding but that add up to considerable urban elegance. There is a certain architectural integrity to, say, St Trophimus Street – a quality that has been all but lost on the Front, among other places.
Problem is, by the language of outstanding architectural characteristics, no individual house in St Trophimus Street is worth saving. By that curious reasoning, whatever is not special is expendable – which explains why Sliema (and Mellieħa, and Mġarr and Manikata, and so on) are in such a mess.
There is a telling parallel with a kind of nature conservation that is obsessed with rare species and places of ‘scientific importance’, to the detriment of stuff that is neither rare nor scientifically important (whatever that means), but that is of much value anyway. Of course, rare orchids and sand dunes are marvellous, but so are poppies and the average valley.
To think and act otherwise is to end up with disconnected pockets of ascribed value, a kind of archipelago of the outstanding surrounded by a sea of destruction. That, and there’s the argument that the outstanding makes much more sense in a meaningful context anyway. Thus, the paintings of Vermeer may be outstanding, but they make more sense in the context of 17th-century Dutch interiors.
I’m not saying that Villa Degiorgio should be demolished, or that the FAA and the Sliema local council were wrong to root for it. The point is that it has as much value as the houses and streets that surround it. Let’s call it a synergy of value. In practice, if not on paper, the Planning Authority has yet to get the memo.
mafalzon@hotmail.com